One of the rare things I like about social media platforms is that they can give us ideas about what we are interested in or working on, help us visualise something and allow us to see what other people are doing.
A friend of mine is interested in cameras, photography and digital editing. I love it too, but not as much as he does, to be honest. But we can meet at a common point, which is actually the output of the shoots: leaving something behind.
You may have read similar articles on this subject before me, and I like to talk about it. I mean, I'm talking about doing something for the future, but to be honest, these topics come back to me too. Maybe because my mind tends to think that way.
There is a saying that I have had in my head for the last five years and I think it is important. It fits this topic. It is a Greek proverb, but I am not sure of its source precisely. What is important is the feeling it gives me.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
This is what life has become for me. It's not that I've worked miracles, it's just the attitude I try to adopt day in and day out. It's easier said than done, especially on a daily basis, and the joy I get from trying to do the work that builds it, or thinking about what I can do, keeps me wanting to write here.
Photo by Yurii Zinets on Unsplash
What I am talking about can have a social contribution as well as an individual impact. On the contrary, it may not even be necessary for everyone. While we believe that it is an individual choice, it would not be absurd to say that what we do somehow shapes the future. We know that we can see this when we look back at the choices we have made, even if only occasionally. What is more important is that we consciously try to influence the future.
Let's go back to the beginning, I mentioned my friend's interest in photography. I meet him from time to time and we go to the districts of Istanbul like Beyoğlu, Pera and Karaköy. This place not only allows us to relive our individual nostalgia and social memories, but also puts us in a time tunnel. Because we can make comparisons and see what has changed. Just like the buildings that have stood there for a century, bearing the traces of old-style architecture and those parasitic plastic windows that live on them timelessly and shamelessly.
His busy schedule doesn't allow him the time, so I talk to him occasionally in a supportive way. Later I realised that these conversations had trickled down to me. As I said, I had discovered our common ground on the subject.
As we all know, photography is about capturing the moment. I, on the other hand, send my ideas, thoughts and fictions of that moment into the future by combining them with words. In fact, what we both do, consciously or unconsciously, serves this purpose and gives us a chance to reach out to our future in a personal sense.
Photo by Ramazan Tokay on Unsplash
Then I came across one of those random videos on social media.
According to the story, this person's grandfather was an old photographer who took about 80,000 photos. He travelled for years and countries, exploring and documenting each place. He then archived them as best he could to take with him into the future.
Now his grandson is analysing them one by one, getting to know the old times and being a guest in his grandfather's experiences. In addition, perhaps because of all the wonders his grandfather left him, he wants to go to the places he travelled, find the places he photographed, live those images today and document them again in a contemporary sense.
This is a great feeling for both sides. One of them lived this pleasure in the past, perhaps he could not go beyond the assumption that this would be the case in the future. The other accepted it as a duty and tried to do the work both to show his respect for it and to establish a path for his own life. The sapling, which he knew could not rest in its shade, became a tree and even dropped its apples. Those who ate the fallen ones began to sow their seeds again.
At the end of the day, as I showed him the video and encouraged him more and more, I was reflecting on myself and how this might affect me. I remembered a post I had saved many years ago. Six years ago.
As you can see in the post, which you can see here if you look at the details, a similar piece of work was presented later in here.
The grandfather of this person decided to make an organised note of all the books he had read since 1949. In addition to information such as the name of the book, the author, the genre, the number of pages, he added the total number of pages he had read or the average number of pages of the books he had read that year.
If you do not have a tradition of archiving, noting and recording information, I think it may seem strange and unnecessary. But for me, maintaining and developing such a record is a treasure. Because although everyone says 'live in the moment, don't get so hung up on the past', they are at the point where they can't remember what they ate yesterday. Keeping notes is like glue for the stuttering mind. See you when you forget your friend's birthday.
As soon as I saw this post, I opened my notes, which I kept in a similar way in 2018, and tried to pick up where I left off in 2020. It was challenging because I realised that I didn't know what I did when, or couldn't remember very well in those years. Of course, I have a digital diary where I record every day of my life with short notes, so I could have overcome that. But even with that, it took me four whole days.
Photo by David Werbrouck on Unsplash
I bear the name of my grandfather, whom I never saw. I take our family name from the respect he earned through his efforts. I know that we do not have the mindset that Japan represents; we like to break away from our traditional structure that is oriented towards the past, we think that modernisation means constantly adapting to the new. In doing so, we can erase what was once lived and experienced just like that. Worst of all, we have begun to normalise this in a callous way.
What happens then? We begin not to care about what we are experiencing in the moment. We enjoy neither the past nor the present.
What prevents this inertia of time, in my opinion, is to be able to carry the traces of the past within us and to leave traces of ourselves for the future. Whatever we can do, whatever makes us who we are.
Because one cannot live in the past, but one can learn from the past. What we will learn is related both to what is left to us and to the mindset that the period has brought. I don't know, maybe all these records won't mean anything in the future. But if I get this excited when I see a record that belongs to someone else, I can keep it alive in the future. Imagine that you are no longer here, but what you left behind is still echoing in the future. Where can you find such cooler, darker shadows, such greener, taller trees?
An article, a photograph, a figurine, a carving, a painting, stamps and other collections... I think it is better to make them and keep them alive in the knowledge that they can contribute in the future, than to keep them alive in such a way that we become addicted to them on a daily basis. Because it also shows us how effective we can be as individuals. It reminds us of the transience of life, the value of this process, that we can only achieve so much, and that what we contribute may be more valuable than we think. It reminds us that we cannot read all the books, write all the words or photograph all the places. This is not a bad thing, just natural and part of reality. Remembering death now and then is not a bad thing.
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